Three months later, the world looked entirely different.

I stood on the glass-enclosed balcony of my mother’s charitable foundation office, a cup of hot tea warming my hands.

The morning sunlight spilled brilliantly across the Manhattan skyline, washing the city in gold.

The annulment had been granted with record speed.

A judge, upon reviewing the medical records and the mountain of financial fraud, had essentially erased the marriage before the ink on the license could dry.

Adrian Blackwell was currently residing in a federal detention center, awaiting a trial that promised to be the media circus of the decade.